Mainstream television broadcasting began in the 1940s and blossomed in the 1950s. From this era into the 1970s, watching television required being in front of the television at the appointed time when a given television show was being broadcast. There was no mechanism for consumers to record a television show for subsequent viewing. In the 1970s, however, video cassette recorders (VCRs) became affordable. Consumers were empowered to record shows onto video cassette tapes with VCRs. The viewing of television shows could therefore be shifted to a more convenient time.
However, using VCR-based technology to time shift the watching of television shows presented a number of issues. First, programming a VCR to correctly record a desired television show by setting a starting time and an ending time was difficult because the user interface for VCRs was clunky and confusing. Many desired shows were not recorded. Second, VCRs recorded television shows on separate, removable video cassette tapes. Video cassette tapes employed an analog recording tape that was subject to deterioration after just a few uses and eventually wore out completely. The consumer also had to manage a library of recording tapes by ensuring that a fresh tape with no meaningful content was inserted and rewound before leaving the VCR to hopefully record a desired television show. Further, video cassette tapes offered only a relatively few fixed recording lengths. Recording length had to be two, four, or six hours. However, with each increase in recording length, the quality of the resulting recording decreased significantly. Consumers therefore had to choose between shorter recordings with acceptable visual quality or longer recordings with poor or almost unwatchable visual quality.
Many of these problems were addressed with the introduction of local digital video recorders (DVRs). DVRs can record a high quality digital version of a television show to a digital recording medium, such as a magnetic disk, which can be reused numerous times with no decrease in recording quality. Further, the digital recording medium for local DVRs is internal to the DVR device. Although this internal recording medium sets an ultimate upper limit on the available recording time for each local DVR device, DVRs have rendered obsolete the storage and manipulation of a library of recordable video cassettes. With regard to programming ease, the user interface for DVRs is also a substantial improvement over that of VCRs.
Unfortunately, recording television shows with DVRs still presents a number of problems. First, recording is permitted by the DVR user interface in blocks of time that are dictated by the expected length of a television show, such as the length of time between a scheduled broadcast start time and a scheduled broadcast end time. Second, a television show that extends beyond the expected length may not be recorded past the scheduled broadcast end time. Some DVRs do permit a consumer to set an extended recording time at the time the recording is requested. However, the extended recording time is offered in fixed increments, such as 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes, and so forth. If the consumer sets a relatively shorter extended recording time, the consumer risks missing the end of the desired television show, especially when the television show is a sporting event that experiences a weather delay or multiple overtimes. If, on the other hand, the consumer sets a relatively longer extended recording time, the consumer is likely wasting a portion of the limited number of recording hours available on the internal recording medium of a local DVR.